(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus to be provided with a secondary battery and an image forming apparatus to be provided with a secondary battery.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Electronic apparatuses of various types operate on both power supplied from a commercial power source (an external power source) and power supplied from a secondary battery, such as a nickel-metal hydride battery.
For instance, an image forming apparatus, which is one type of an electronic apparatus, may be provided with an image forming unit (a processing unit) that executes image forming and an interface (a reception unit) that receives an instruction for image forming issued from outside the image forming apparatus. Convention technology proposes, as a system for utilizing both power supplied from a commercial power source and power supplied from a secondary battery in such an image forming apparatus, a structure of switching between a standby state and an operation state.
Here, the standby state refers to a state where power from the commercial power source is neither supplied to the image forming unit nor the interface while power from the secondary battery is supplied to the interface. On the other hand, the operation state refers to a state where power from the commercial power source is supplied to both the image forming unit and the interface.
More specifically, by executing an image forming operation during the operation state and by switching from the operation state to the standby state when an image forming operation is not executed, the interface is able to receive an instruction for image forming during the standby state by power being supplied thereto from the secondary battery at the same time as conservation of power is realized due to consumption of power supplied from the commercial power source being suppressed during the standby state.
Further, when implementing the above-described structure where switching between the standby state and the operation state is performed, so as to ensure that power from the secondary battery is supplied to the interface during the standby state, charging of the secondary battery is completed during the operation state.
However, switching to the operation state is performed, or in other words, image forming is executed only when a user instruction is received. As such, it is highly uncertain as to when and how long the secondary battery can be charged since the frequency at which user instructions are received differs depending on the time of the day. That is, user instructions may be received very frequently during one time period of the day, whereas user instructions may be rarely received during another time period of the day.
When, as mentioned above, it is highly uncertain as to when and how long the secondary battery can be charged, problematic situations may arise such as where the operation of the interface becomes disabled during the standby state due to the battery power level of the secondary battery decreasing as a result of the standby state continuing over a long period of time. One measure that can be taken so as to prevent the occurrence of such problematic situations is to charge the secondary battery as much as possible, for instance, to the full battery capacity of the secondary battery, when the secondary battery can be charged.
However, although it is highly uncertain as to when and how long the secondary battery can be charged as discussed above, when the secondary battery is charged to the full battery capacity so as to prevent such problematic situations as mentioned above from arising, another problem is brought about. That is, when the secondary battery is charged to its full battery capacity, a great load is exerted on the secondary battery, and accordingly, the life-span of the secondary battery is shortened. This problem is not unique to image forming apparatuses having the above described structure, and there is a possibility of the same problem occurring in electronic apparatuses in general. Here, reference is made to an electronic apparatus provided with a processing unit and a reception unit that operates on power supplied from a secondary battery, in which, when the reception unit receives a request for processing to be executed by the processing unit during the standby state, the processing unit commences operation and executes the processing requested.